Exit Vistana Timeshare Help

[WorldT]

The "club points" is also the same thing as Abound points. See post #23 and #25 above. If you don't elect, you can use your flex points normally.
Also, you don't need to post anywhere else since all your questions are Vistana and you started this thread.

 

[sponger76]

the main goal when they sell that lower number of points is to "upgrade" you later by selling you more after you have realized you don't have enough points to book a lot of places in a 2BR for a week.

I actually had a salesman tell me this, that I could book some short stays in smaller units for the amount of points he was proposing, that I'd enjoy them but that I'd realize I'd need more points to get the really desirable resorts/unit sizes and want to buy more.

 

[dawsonar802]

So with roughly ~$1500 in fees per year and needing to pay off the loan, that does make for some expensive vacations. Especially factoring in that airfare is also needed. We have traveled to the Caribbean a few times with a family of 3 at all inclusive resorts including airfare for $5k, so that is the tough spot for me. Like we can go 2hrs away to stay at a place and spend all of our points, just seems like a waste. I will try and look for some more information but am hoping to have a detailed walkthrough/call with someone at Vistana to figure all this out. It is like you need to be a full time travel agent to figure some of this out.. .

Will the maintenance fee ever go down? Probably a dumb question, but I figured i would ask. I assume that would only go up, but the question would be how much.

 

[sponger76]

Will the maintenance fee ever go down? Probably a dumb question, but I figured i would ask. I assume that would only go up, but the question would be how much.

Going down is a no. How much it goes up varies. Historically I think somewhere between 3-5% per year, but recently it went up something like 20% and then for 2026 Sheraton Flex only went up less than 1%, same for Westin Aventuras, and I think Westin Flex had no increase.

 

[Venter]

@dawsonar802 hope this helps...

What is done is done. Don't throw good money after bad by speaking with Wesley Group. Lear the system. The people who are best of are legacy owners with Hawaii/Beach and platinum weeks in either system. You have Sheraton Flex Home Options of 65 300 points. This means you have priority to reserve 12 8 months out at any of the resorts within the Sheraton Flex Trust before anybody else.

These resorts are:

1. Sheraton Vistana Resort (FL)
2. Sheraton Vistana Villages (FL)
3. Vistana's Beach Club (FL)
4. Sheraton Desert Oasis (AZ)
5. Sheraton Broadway Plantation (SC)
6. Sheraton Steamboat Springs (CO)
7. Sheraton Mountain Vista (CO)
8. Sheraton Lakeside Terrace (CO)
9. Sheraton Kauai Resort Villas (HI)

You can check this link and see how many points you need to reserve in the Sheraton Flex system between 8 month and 12 months with priority: https://vistana-web-static.s3.amazo...assets/pdf/charts/staroptions_value_chart.pdf. Between 1 day and 8 months you can reserve at any of the other resorts in this link by using Staroptions. This sounds confusing but all this means is that your Home options are turned into Staroptions. One benefit of owning in the Flex system is that you convert only as many Home options (1:1) for Staroptions as you need. Weeks owners have to convert their whole week and then loose the 8-12 month priority at their resort(This is simplistic as there are other ways at play like locking off etc. but, I am just trying to keep it simple).

Now if you look carefully at the chart you will see that Mon-Wed costs the least amount of points. Thursday and Sunday costs a little more. Friday and Saturday costs the most. Your 56 300 points could therefore allow you to stay in a 1 bedroom villa during Platinum season in Hawaii(Oceanfront) from Monday to Saturday(5 days) and you will have some change left that you could bank into next year or in Interval International. Unfortunately you will have to bank 1 year and borrow from the next year(3 years of points) to stay in a Hawaii 2 bedroom for a week and then it will not be Oceanfront. However, it will take 2 years of points to stay in a premium one bedroom (Oceanfront) in Hawaii for a week. You can look at these charts and work out more scenarios. If you bank all your points for one year forward, you will be able to book studios or 1 bedroom(non premium) villas for 5 years by combining points over the time period. Then you will have to take a year off and start the process again. The only caveat is that if you do this by combining points you can only reserve 8 months or less out. Most Vistana owners have reported that they still get good inventory if you reserve at 8 months on the dot. The fact that you own developer points allow you all the above flexibility. If you owned resale points you would only be able to reserve within your trust and this is why resale points are worthless.

Now, because you own developer(bought from Marriott) points you have other options as well. Partly you pay a club fee and then do not pay membership in Interval International(The exchange company) to allow you to deposit your Flex Home Options or Staroptions to be able to exchange to other resorts that are within the exchange company. The good thing about Flex is that you can exchange back to other Vistana or Marriott resorts. If you own Abound points(the points Marriott sell at the Marriott resorts) you cannot exchange back into Marriott resorts. If you look at the chart below you can see how many points it will take to exchange into other resorts. For example to exchange into a 2 bedroom resort during the highest peak time(mostly during holidays) it will take 110 000 points. This will therefore cost less than booking into the same for instance a Hawaii resort in a 2 bedroom during platinum season. The catch is that it is subject to availability and the view is not guaranteed. However if you put a request in 12 months out with flexible dates you are likely to get an exchange but I must reiterate the view is not guaranteed. There are also tricks that allow you to browse for instant exchanges where you will see what is available. Vistana exchanges are held for a couple of weeks when available for Vistana owners to exchange too. Then Marriott resorts become available after crossing their priority time for a few days before becoming available to other exchangers outside the Marriott/Vistana system. Disney exchanges in Interval International which makes it a good exchange system to be in.

Because you own a developer purchase of Sheraton Flex you also have the option to convert your points to Abound points 34:1. That means you can get 1655 Abound points to reserve Marriott resorts and Vistana resorts in the Abound trust. You can convert intervals of 20 000 Flex points or all off your points. If you convert for example 2 x 20 000 points you will have 16 300 Sheraton Home options left. You cannot convert the last points because it is not a full 20 000 point interval. You have to decide before converting if it is an all or some scenario you want to use. People say Sheraton Flex MF's is expensive but you can do much worse. As stated in the beginning of this piece the owners who are making out well in terms of MF/abound point are the platinum weeks owners in Hawaii/beach resorts. If you take the current Sheraton Flex MF for your points and consider how many abound points you get your cost per Abound point is about 75cents. This is below last years Abound MF which was 82cents per point.

Lets move on. Using the converted Abound points allow you to book at 12 months out unless you have a certain status due to the amount of points you own or own multiple weeks. Again there are nuances according to your status. There are rules such as paying premium for reserving a week/days at 12/13 months out if you are at lower tiers of ownership. If you cancel there could also be penalties involved if you are in a lower tier. I suggest you read the sticky in the Marriott forum for more information. Just like with Flex points the cost per day for Sunday to Thursday is the cheapest and then Friday/Saturday is most expensive to reserve per day. Marriott does not have a full list available in one PDF like Vistana(too many resorts) but you can look at points charts on the Marriott owners site. Because you are a developer owner you will be able to access this site too do everything a Marriott owner can do. I see this as another perk that a Flex owner has because Marriott owners cannot access the Vistana owners site to reserve etc. You will have the flexibility of applying many scenarios according to resort, peak time, and type of villa just like in Vistana to allow you to make the best use of your points. You will be able to bank and borrow points to allow reserving bigger units in higher demand peak times with certain view types. I can tell you that Hawaii 2 bedrooms during peak times are unlikely to be reserved for a full week by combining 3 years worth of points as they are usually north of 5000 Abound points to reserve. This counts for other beach and platinum resorts as well. There may be resorts in Orlando or less high demand places such as Branson where you may be able to reserve a platinum 2 bedroom week. Skiing for 5-6 days over Christmas is possible if you stay in a 1 bedroom or studio by using around 1600 Abound points. As you can see there are possibilities and options Abound(pun intended).

Lastly you could deposit the Abound points you converted into Interval International but as you can see from the chart below it is not quite as gainful to use Abound points for exchange as it is using Flex points. You will not be able to exchange for a 2 bedroom during the highest peak period with two years worth of points. You can also not exchange to any Marriott properties but Vistana is available. Exchanges to other resorts outside the Marriott/Vistana bubble such as Disney are also available. Just remember it is subject too availability.

In a nutshell I just want to say that you could have done a lot worse but also a lot better. With what you have hopefully you can make it work and your purchase more palaptable.

 

[dawsonar802]

View attachment 116284

Can you explain what this is?

 

[Venter]

Can you explain what this is?

See my completed post.

 

[dawsonar802]

@dawsonar802 hope this helps...

What is done is done. Don't throw good money after bad by speaking with Wesley Group. Lear the system. The people who are best of are legacy owners with Hawaii/Beach and platinum weeks in either system. You have Sheraton Flex Home Options of 65 300 points. This means you have priority to reserve 12 8 months out at any of the resorts within the Sheraton Flex Trust before anybody else.

These resorts are:

1. Sheraton Vistana Resort (FL)
2. Sheraton Vistana Villages (FL)
3. Vistana's Beach Club (FL)
4. Sheraton Desert Oasis (AZ)
5. Sheraton Broadway Plantation (SC)
6. Sheraton Steamboat Springs (CO)
7. Sheraton Mountain Vista (CO)
8. Sheraton Lakeside Terrace (CO)
9. Sheraton Kauai Resort Villas (HI)

You can check this link and see how many points you need to reserve in the Sheraton Flex system between 8 month and 12 months with priority: https://vistana-web-static.s3.amazo...assets/pdf/charts/staroptions_value_chart.pdf. Between 1 day and 8 months you can reserve at any of the other resorts in this link by using Staroptions. This sounds confusing but all this means is that your Home options are turned into Staroptions. One benefit of owning in the Flex system is that you convert only as many Home options (1:1) for Staroptions as you need. Weeks owners have to convert their whole week and then loose the 8-12 month priority at their resort(This is simplistic as there are other ways at play like locking off etc. but, I am just trying to keep it simple).

Now if you look carefully at the chart you will see that Mon-Wed costs the least amount of points. Thursday and Sunday costs a little more. Friday and Saturday costs the most. Your 56 300 points could therefore allow you to stay in a 1 bedroom villa during Platinum season in Hawaii(Oceanfront) from Monday to Saturday(5 days) and you will have some change left that you could bank into next year or in Interval International. Unfortunately you will have to bank 1 year and borrow from the next year(3 years of points) to stay in a Hawaii 2 bedroom for a week and then it will not be Oceanfront. However, it will take 2 years of points to stay in a premium one bedroom (Oceanfront) in Hawaii for a week. You can look at these charts and work out more scenarios. If you bank all your points for one year forward, you will be able to book studios or 1 bedroom(non premium) villas for 5 years by combining points over the time period. Then you will have to take a year off and start the process again. The only caveat is that if you do this by combining points you can only reserve 8 months or less out. Most Vistana owners have reported that they still get good inventory if you reserve at 8 months on the dot. The fact that you own developer points allow you all the above flexibility. If you owned resale points you would only be able to reserve within your trust and this is why resale points are worthless.

Now, because you own developer(bought from Marriott) points you have other options as well. Partly you pay a club fee and then do not pay membership in Interval International(The exchange company) to allow you to deposit your Flex Home Options or Staroptions to be able to exchange to other resorts that are within the exchange company. The good thing about Flex is that you can exchange back to other Vistana or Marriott resorts. If you own Abound points(the points Marriott sell at the Marriott resorts) you cannot exchange back into Marriott resorts. If you look at the chart below you can see how many points it will take to exchange into other resorts. For example to exchange into a 2 bedroom resort during the highest peak time(mostly during holidays) it will take 110 000 points. This will therefore cost less than booking into the same for instance a Hawaii resort in a 2 bedroom during platinum season. The catch is that it is subject to availability and the view is not guaranteed. However if you put a request in 12 months out with flexible dates you are likely to get an exchange but I must reiterate the view is not guaranteed. There are also tricks that allow you to browse for instant exchanges where you will see what is available. Vistana exchanges are held for a couple of weeks when available for Vistana owners to exchange too. Then Marriott resorts become available after crossing their priority time for a few days before becoming available to other exchangers outside the Marriott/Vistana system. Disney exchanges in Interval International which makes it a good exchange system to be in.


View attachment 116284


Because you own a developer purchase of Sheraton Flex you also have the option to convert your points to Abound points 34:1. That means you can get 1655 Abound points to reserve Marriott resorts and Vistana resorts in the Abound trust. You can convert intervals of 20 000 Flex points or all off your points. If you convert for example 2 x 20 000 points you will have 16 300 Sheraton Home options left. You cannot convert the last points because it is not a full 20 000 point interval. You have to decide before converting if it is an all or some scenario you want to use. People say Sheraton Flex MF's is expensive but you can do much worse. As stated in the beginning of this piece the owners who are making out well in terms of MF/abound point are the platinum weeks owners in Hawaii/beach resorts. If you take the current Sheraton Flex MF for your points and consider how many abound points you get your cost per Abound point is about 75cents. This is below last years Abound MF which was 82cents per point.

Lets move on. Using the converted Abound points allow you to book at 12 months out unless you have a certain status due to the amount of points you own or own multiple weeks. Again there are nuances according to your status. There are rules such as paying premium for reserving a week/days at 12/13 months out if you are at lower tiers of ownership. If you cancel there could also be penalties involved if you are in a lower tier. I suggest you read the sticky in the Marriott forum for more information. Just like with Flex points the cost per day for Sunday to Thursday is the cheapest and then Friday/Saturday is most expensive to reserve per day. Marriott does not have a full list available in one PDF like Vistana(too many resorts) but you can look at points charts on the Marriott owners site. Because you are a developer owner you will be able to access this site too do everything a Marriott owner can do. I see this as another perk that a Flex owner has because Marriott owners cannot access the Vistana owners site to reserve etc. You will have the flexibility of applying many scenarios according to resort, peak time, and type of villa just like in Vistana to allow you to make the best use of your points. You will be able to bank and borrow points to allow reserving bigger units in higher demand peak times with certain view types. I can tell you that Hawaii 2 bedrooms during peak times are unlikely to be reserved for a full week by combining 3 years worth of points as they are usually north of 5000 Abound points to reserve. This counts for other beach and platinum resorts as well. There may be resorts in Orlando or less high demand places such as Branson where you may be able to reserve a platinum 2 bedroom week. Skiing for 5-6 days over Christmas is possible if you stay in a 1 bedroom or studio by using around 1600 Abound points. As you can see there are possibilities and options Abound(pun intended).

Lastly you could deposit the Abound points you converted into Interval International but as you can see from the chart below it is not quite as gainful to use Abound points for exchange as it is using Flex points. You will not be able to exchange for a 2 bedroom during the highest peak period with two years worth of points. You can also not exchange to any Marriott properties but Vistana is available. Exchanges to other resorts outside the Marriott/Vistana bubble such as Disney are also available. Just remember it is subject too availability.

View attachment 116286

In a nutshell I just want to say that you could have done a lot worse but also a lot better. With what you have hopefully you can make it work and your purchase more palaptable.

Wow… excellent information @Venter . I will for sure need to read over this a few time and will have some questions. Thank you for the time in putting this together.

 

[dawsonar802]

Hey All. It has been a little while since my last post here. I wanted to report back that I was able to file a CC dispute and get a full refund from Wesley Financial. They fought it pretty hard of course, but in the end they threw in the towel. So, effectively I am now back to square one. I am still finding it extremely tough to understand how to use the Vistana timeshare so am thinking it is time to get rid of it. Again, the issue is there is a loan on it. So I see my options here really as:

1. Pay the loan in full (around $19k) - this is less than ideal but would have the least of at all any impact on credit.
2. We did find a lawyer that specializes in this, but that is around $6k. There still will be an impact to credit, but they claim to have resources to help fix it and say the cancellation is generally pretty swift.
3. Stop paying and just let it go to collections. This is less than ideal as it will likely have a huge impact on credit. From previous posts I mentioned we have great credit that has taken years to build (850’s) so we really do not want to tank that. We will be doing a refi on our home probably within the next 6mo and have a car lease that will need renewed so having this show up would probably not be great.

The loan payment is close to $300 a mo and with the $1200 maint fee and $250 club dues coming up at the end of the year it would be another almost $4k to keep it though the end of the year.

Are there options I am missing or what are your thoughts/advice? Thanks again in advance.

 

[Hindsite]

Are there options I am missing or what are your thoughts/advice? Thanks again in advance.

Take a bit of time to learn how to get the great vacations that are available with the ownership, through Sheraton Flex options, VSN, Interval International and potentially Abound. There's a lot to go after and many people do very well with smaller contracts, so there's no reason why you can't be one of those until you have paid it off.

 

[dioxide45]

Hey All. It has been a little while since my last post here. I wanted to report back that I was able to file a CC dispute and get a full refund from Wesley Financial. They fought it pretty hard of course, but in the end they threw in the towel. So, effectively I am now back to square one. I am still finding it extremely tough to understand how to use the Vistana timeshare so am thinking it is time to get rid of it. Again, the issue is there is a loan on it. So I see my options here really as:

1. Pay the loan in full (around $19k) - this is less than ideal but would have the least of at all any impact on credit.
2. We did find a lawyer that specializes in this, but that is around $6k. There still will be an impact to credit, but they claim to have resources to help fix it and say the cancellation is generally pretty swift.
3. Stop paying and just let it go to collections. This is less than ideal as it will likely have a huge impact on credit. From previous posts I mentioned we have great credit that has taken years to build (850’s) so we really do not want to tank that. We will be doing a refi on our home probably within the next 6mo and have a car lease that will need renewed so having this show up would probably not be great.

The loan payment is close to $300 a mo and with the $1200 maint fee and $250 club dues coming up at the end of the year it would be another almost $4k to keep it though the end of the year.

Are there options I am missing or what are your thoughts/advice? Thanks again in advance.

How is option #2 any better than what you've gone through with Wesley? Same promises will likely have the same result.

 

[daviator]

How is option #2 any better than what you've gone through with Wesley? Same promises will likely have the same result.

You took the words out of my fingers. Just another predator who will take your money and tell you to stop paying (and have your credit ruined.) There is no way to get out of the debt other than defaulting on it, with significant consequences.

Presumably you bought the ownership hoping to use it. I'd suggest you learn to do so, it's not a bad product. Many of us are very happy with our ownerships – though, knowing what we know now, we probably could have spent a lot less money up front by buying resale.

 

[TheTimeTraveler]

Hey All. It has been a little while since my last post here. I wanted to report back that I was able to file a CC dispute and get a full refund from Wesley Financial. They fought it pretty hard of course, but in the end they threw in the towel. So, effectively I am now back to square one. I am still finding it extremely tough to understand how to use the Vistana timeshare so am thinking it is time to get rid of it. Again, the issue is there is a loan on it. So I see my options here really as:

1. Pay the loan in full (around $19k) - this is less than ideal but would have the least of at all any impact on credit.
2. We did find a lawyer that specializes in this, but that is around $6k. There still will be an impact to credit, but they claim to have resources to help fix it and say the cancellation is generally pretty swift.
3. Stop paying and just let it go to collections. This is less than ideal as it will likely have a huge impact on credit. From previous posts I mentioned we have great credit that has taken years to build (850’s) so we really do not want to tank that. We will be doing a refi on our home probably within the next 6mo and have a car lease that will need renewed so having this show up would probably not be great.

The loan payment is close to $300 a mo and with the $1200 maint fee and $250 club dues coming up at the end of the year it would be another almost $4k to keep it though the end of the year.

Are there options I am missing or what are your thoughts/advice? Thanks again in advance.

Think really hard about paying anyone $6K to get you out of this. If this can easily be done I can assure you then others would be doing this all the time. I have yet to figure out how to legally cancel a deed that you voluntarily signed for (even though you felt pressured). Remember, you did have a right to rescind (which you did not).

To offset your expenses think about renting your ownership each year.

Other than that? Let it go to collections and hope it won't interfere with your life for seven years.

PS: You're incredibly lucky to get a refund from Wesley Financial...... That just doesn't happen often.

Best of luck!












.

 

[dawsonar802]

Hello everyone, not sure how I missed the replies, I did not see any email notifications. Great feedback as always here and I agree figuring out how to use it seems like the best course of action. We will try and spend some times doing this and see where it takes us. We have several points that need used by the EOY that were bonus options so hopefully we can find something.

As for Wesley, yes I agree, they were pretty adamant that they do not let people cancel either but luckily we had a good credit card company decided in our favor. I fully expected to have to had paid something there, but all good.

Thanks again everyone, I will try and post an update again after we get something booked or if any thing else transpires.

 

[dioxide45]

As for Wesley, yes I agree, they were pretty adamant that they do not let people cancel either but luckily we had a good credit card company decided in our favor.

Doesn't Wesley have a "money back guaranty"? How can they be adamant that they don't let people cancel when they promise something like that?

 

[dawsonar802]

Doesn't Wesley have a "money back guaranty"? How can they be adamant that they don't let people cancel when they promise something like that?

.. yeah the catch there is, you only get the money back if they cannot cancel the timeshare within the contract time. So for us that was 3yr. And if an offer from the timeshare company is presented and you do not take it, then they do not have to give the money back. Looking back, it was a dumb idea to even look into them, but we were desperate and having some financial issues that warranted trying to get out of it. $8k to get out of a $20k loan and yearly $1500 in fees seemed like a good idea. But in the long run it seems the only way out is to default which we could do on our own if we wanted too.

 

[Mickey55]

Harborside Atlantis Deed backs. For those of us who own Harborside Atlantis time shares and desire to "deed back" those units, here is the latest information from the Vistana Portal. I submitted a deed back information request on 5/20/2026. The response was "there are NO deed back programs in place for Harborside Atlantis". They stated that they (Vistana) would put me on a "waiting list" so that I would be first in line to deed back my unit of 23 years. This is the same auto generated response I got last year at this time. I submitted a deed back request on 5/18/2026 to https://www.marriottvacationclubs.com/s/exit and their response was NO. I truly believe there will NEVER be a deed back program and the only options we would have is to continue to pay the high maintenance fees or default on those fee and let the units be repossessed. I've been trying for a year to give my unit away on all social media platforms to include TUG with no luck. BTW, if you are successful in giving away/selling your unit and want a reputable attorney in the Bahamas to handle the transaction, I contacted William Pilcher at wpilcher@resort-title-com. last year. His fee at that time to handle the Bahamian transfer was $2811 U.S. dollars. Unfortunately, I never had a chance to use him. I had the opportunity to use my week last September and it will be the last visit for me and my family. Good luck to all.